‘Radical’ U.S. nuns clash with Vatican doctrine guardians

Are they rebel nuns, plotting the fall of Rome? Have they traveled far off the Roman Catholic reservation, promoting such heretical ideas as gay marriage, female ordination and abortion on demand? And, in the process, are they leading American Catholics astray?

Or are they living saints, doing the Church’s toughest work in the trenches, among the poor and the sick, all the while being under-appreciated by an all-male leadership worried about preserving power and more concerned with doctrine than charity?

“It’s a clash of monarchy versus democracy. It’s not about faith. It’s culture,” said Sister Simone Campbell of the Washington-based group Network, a social justice lobby.

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The United States is in the midst of a major investigation by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) into the group that represents 80% of the country’s 57,000 nuns.

According to the CDF’s seven-page Doctrinal Assessment of American of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), there are “serious doctrinal problems which affect many in the consecrated life.”

“The problem is that it is now hard to distinguish between what the nuns do and what lay social workers do,” said Ann Carey, a Catholic journalist and author of Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities.

“This is not about one or two specific incidents but a general drift away from Catholic belief.”

The CDF is the Vatican’s toughest office, the group charged with making sure the faithful do not stray from Church teaching. It never does anything lightly, so this investigation is already expected to have dramatic implications for the way American nuns conduct their lives.

“I think the inference that many people could draw from the publication of the Vatican document is that we are unfaithful, that we are not in communion with the Church,” Sister Pat Farrell, the LCWR’s president, told the National Catholic Reporter this week. “We really do not see ourselves in that way.”

The Vatican has already appointed a committee of bishops to revise the LCWR’s statutes and develop new programs for the nuns that would deepen their understanding of Church doctrine.

Its latest salvo has exposed a seemingly dysfunctional relationship between hierarchical Rome and highly educated American women raised in a country where free thinking and notions of independence are national virtues.

The idea of independence for nuns is anathema to the Church hierarchy, which sees obedience necessary for all Catholics.

The document specifically notes its concern about the LCWR’s enormous influence on religious congregations around the world.

“We’re a bit more vibrant than the European folks,” said Sister Campbell, whose order, the Sisters of Social Work, is part of the LCWR.

“I don’t know anything the bishops are saying is true. I don’t think we’re radical feminists. We now have advanced degrees, often more education than the bishops have, which makes the bishops nervous.

“What irks the bishops is that ordinary people look to Catholic sisters for their moral perspectives and find us credible teachers. We understand the complexity of life. When you can live in the Vatican without engaging in real people in pastoral settings it’s way easier to be black and white.”

Sister Campbell is now organizing a nine-city bus tour to support the nuns’ side in this debate.

The CDF document, though, is clear the issue is obedience. There should be submission of the “intellect and will” to the Church’s authentic teachings, even on issues that are not technically dogma, it states.

Some nuns have argued the celibate priesthood, the all-male clergy and wearing habits are not doctrinal issues but ones of tradition — an argument that does not get a warm reception in Rome.

‘I don’t think we’re radical feminists. We now have advanced degrees, often more education than the bishops have, which makes the bishops nervous’

The sisters, says the Vatican, have also been too loose when expressing Church teaching on gay relationships and other sexual issues.

The conflict came to the fore this week when the CDF said a 2006 book by Sister Margaret Farley posed a “grave danger” to the faithful by contradicting Church teaching on masturbation and homosexuality.

But the censuring of Sister Farley, a professor of theology at Yale University, is just a sideshow to the main event.

The CDF claims the nuns’ leaders have drifted into “radical feminism” and speakers at leadership events have expounded “moving beyond the Church and even beyond Jesus.”

The CDF also showed it has a long memory: it notes the sisters have yet to correct a 1977 document that questioned the all-male priesthood.

And while the CDF document commends U.S. nuns for their work in social justice, it scolds them for their silence on euthanasia and abortion.

Given what has gone on in recent years, American nuns might feel they have good reason to feel they are under attack.

In 2009, another Vatican office ordered an “Apostolic Visitation” to examine consecrated life in the United States. From the Church perspective it was intended to come to grips with the falling number of vocations and religious orders that were aging into extinction.

Sister Sandra Schnieders, a professor emerita at the Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley, Calif., was scathing in her assessment of that investigation.

“It is similar to a grand jury indictment, set in motion when there is reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or a prima facie case of serious abuse of wrong-doing of some kind,” she wrote.

Supporters of the Vatican’s latest move say these issues have been percolating for years and the nuns had ample time to reflect on what was needed to settle differences with Rome. There have been reports the sisters were told about the Vatican’s displeasure as early as 2001, though the official date of the investigation is 2008.

Those taking the side of the CDF also note this is not the Vatican attacking American nuns, as has been portrayed in many media stories, but rather trying to correct the few women in leadership positions.

‘This is the power struggle and the nuns want shared corporate power and they want a voice for their own theology whether it’s Catholic or not’

The LCWR was created 60 years ago by the Vatican to open up communication between Rome and U.S. nuns.

But as Donna Bethell reported in the National Catholic Register, in 1980 so many nuns became fed up with the group’s liberalism they petitioned Rome to be allowed to set up their own more orthodox group.

In 1992, the Holy See allowed the creation of the Council of Major Superiors of Women Religious, which has about 10,000 nuns as members.

The story notes many communities in the LCWR abandoned communal prayer and wearing habits, things that always defined the religious life and reinforced correct Catholic teaching.

“These elements of religious life were meant to promote and protect the consecration of religious life as ‘in the world but not of it,’ ” the story said.

Stephen Miletic, a professor of scripture at Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, said the LCWR has helped to destroy what it means for women to have a vocation.

“The Church learned centuries ago not to jump to conclusions and they have learned from that. This is why this investigation has taken years,” he said.

“The LCWR has obliterated the meaning of what it means to be a religious sister. The media is making this look like a bunch of fat Italian bishops beating up on nuns. That is false. This is the power struggle and the nuns want shared corporate power and they want a voice for their own theology whether it’s Catholic or not.”